Tag: Congressional Republicans

Cumulative Polling on Congresional Approval Ratings Reveals GOP Vulnerability

Jon Ponder

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

I put together this image charting the results from a new national Quinnipiac poll, which shows Democrats taking a nine-point lead over Republicans on the generic congressional ballot — an advantage that’s steadily grown in recent months.

There is simply no good news for the GOP in the Quinnipiac results. Significant majorities oppose Republicans using a shutdown to go after the Affordable Care Act, trust President Obama over the GOP on most national issues, and blame Republicans for gridlock. In all, 74% of Americans disapprove of congressional Republican lawmakers — their lowest score ever in a Quinnipiac poll.

Chait: Boehner a ‘Trembling Child Monarch’

Buck Banks

Yesterday, the House of Representatives pulled a bill from the floor for lack of votes — the sort of scrambling chaos that occurs routinely in the chamber where John Boehner presides like a trembling child monarch. But this defeat was different. The bill concerned the funding of housing and transportation programs, though its failure represented more than just a programmatic setback, or even a setback for the Republican economic strategy writ large, but the potential ruin of its entire posture toward Obama. Since taking control of the House two and a half years ago, Republicans have fomented a series of crises that seemed to have no end in sight, explicitly refusing to negotiate with Obama and implicitly denying his legitimacy as president. The crumbling of that wall is far from certain, but yesterday a wide crack opened up.

— Jonathan Chait, writing in New York Magazine.